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Well, ain’t that a kick in the groan?

The Net has always had a sense about it that “the best things in life are free.” Looking for a utility, a program, a way of doing things? It’s probably…

The Net has always had a sense about it that “the best things in life are free.” Looking for a utility, a program, a way of doing things? It’s probably out there as freeware (or, short of that, shareware that you can just get nagged about until your conscience tells you to pay for it). Or, failing that, something is probably available that’s cheap, cheap, cheap. There have been a tremendous number of incredible bargains out there, such that people expect things to always be that way.

Which is why this is going to raise a huge stink, despite efforts to make it seem okay.

Basically, here are your New, Improved Licensing (!) choices for Movable Type:

  • Movable Type Free: Max 1 author, 3 blogs. No support, no Recently Updated list, etc. (Free)
  • Movable Type Personal Edition: Up to 3 authors, 5 blogs, non-commercial use only. ($100, intro price $70)
  • Movable Type Commerical (5 Authors): Up to 5 authors, 5 blogs. ($300, intro price $200)
  • Movable Type Commercial (20 Authors): Up to 20 authors, 15 blogs. ($700, intro price $600)

Ouch. And, again, ouch.

Lots of developer-related bits (which will also be a pay network, and may not be accessible to “free” users [my mistake]), lots of opening up to allow more commercial use, consultant support, product integration stuff … but, ouch.

I’m sure there will be a lot of second- and third-guessing of Six Apart’s motivations in this, and a lot of cries of betrayal and outrage. The fact is, though, this has to be a paying deal for 6A, and expecting continued, substantial development for free was probably an unreasonable expectation. MT is an increasingly powerful tool, and to make a go of it in the commercial market (a necessity), it was almost inevitable that some sort of licensing was going to be imposed.

That said, my days on MT are thus numbered.

The fact is, I have more than three blogs. Some are moribund, some are only occasionally updated, and some should definitely be moved over (as I, ironically, noted yesterday) to wikis. I also have more than one author (at a minimum, Margie’s recipe blog and my personal blog make two authors; if I want folks to contribute to the IDC blog, that’s another five beyond that).

In fact, beyond the limited number of blogs, it’s probably the limits on authors (and, thus, collaboration) that’s the more significant limitation, for the blogosphere as a whole, if not for me personally.

So, time to start looking for an alternative. Which well and truly sucks, to be perfectly honest. The search doesn’t have to be fast — MT 2.661 is pretty stable, so there’s no immediate rush to get to 3.0 (or to something else). Conversion of the databases will be almost certainly the biggest hassle. Fortunately, there will certainly be others looking at alternatives, and I won’t be ashamed to look at their efforts for inspiration. Certainly any system that lets you suck in your MT data will get a big leg up.

As for others, I expect to see a general migration away from MT, even as it (deservedly) makes corporate inroads (or gets bought out by someone). I’m sure some people will give TypePad another look, or similar services. The fact is, most serious bloggers need more than the limits of the free license, and most casual bloggers need something a lot easier than MT (and will not have the 6A or community support for its installation and support).

(While I acknowledge the likely need to go to a pay system, I think the pricing structure is ill-advised, at best. Most personal users will not pony up $100 — for how long? — for a personal license that is so limited. Heck, I’m not sure how many companies will pony up the corporate prices, either.)

I don’t know. It may well be that once the inevitable howls die down, something else will change. But, for the moment, I think 6A has made a sadly inevitable move that will hopefully net it some strong corporate support, even as it cuts off its grass roots ties.

UPDATE: Additional howls and cries and moans. And, I’m told, the MT Forums and the trackbacks to the Mena post above are both full of not very complimentary comments. Not surprisingly, I can’t get to movabletype.com or sixapart.com right now. Traffic, much?

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18 thoughts on “Well, ain’t that a kick in the groan?”

  1. For my personal use, I could handle the limit on blogs. After all, I’m just using two right now — one for me and one for my sidestuff. But for my teaching stuff, the limit on authors is costly and insufficient. Two classes of 25 students each puts the cost of MT 3.0 well over $1000. Sure, I’ve inquired about educational pricing, but I’m not optimistic.

  2. Movable Gripe

    Wow. I have never seen something so universally bashed before. There’s only two trackbacks to that post that could be construed as remotely positive, and even then you’re doing quite a spin job. Over the last couple hours I’ve read…

  3. I did see a reference on the pricing page for educational costs (I wonder if non-profits will also get a price break), but given the amount of mail I expect they’re going to be getting, I wouldn’t expect any response very quickly. :-O

  4. We’re in the same boat with our gaming stuff, and even if we move some of it to our (free/GPL) wiki, we’ll be way over the limit on authors, just with our game stuff.

    Another problem for the game-oriented blogs is that there’s no provision for inactive authors. What happens when a player leaves and you replace her? She’s still in the database–you can’t get rid of her. If she still counts against your limit, keeping you from adding new players to the blog, it will inhibit the usefulness of the tool for the group as a whole.

  5. I could, ironcially, handle the ‘free’ limitations, were it not, again for the game blogs like Chrysalis, where logs and journals are so much a part of the game. Alot of my blogs that were active at one time no longer are and the material could be removed easily to switched over to static data.

    I’ve been behind the curve on updates for so long that I honestly don’t really care about this much, since they’ll never add the functionality that I really want anyway, but I’ll be keeping a weather-eye on places like SEB and so forth that routinely check out and review other packages.

    We’ll see. We’ll certainly see.

  6. The huge brouhaha makes me wonder whether 6A will back off a bit on this pricing. Hell, I’d take free, non-support licensing if the blog or (more importantly) author limits were removed. For gaming blogs (as Doyce and Ginger point out), that limit is a show-stopper (unless you lump users together into the same author).

  7. And as you point out, Doyce, it’s not like every 2.x version of MT is going to disappear overnight. Indeed, I expect there may be quite a cottage industry in keeping those sites up and running for a long time. That might encourage, in turn, 6A to loosen up their personal use licensing.

  8. Two interesting threads I’m hearing:

    1. A lot of torque from folks who have been volunteering their time for the MT3 alpha and beta.
    2. That this was a blind-side, with no hint that a pay model was coming.

    As to the latter, there’d long been talk of free-vs-pay versions, in conjunction with the long-promised “MT Pro.” The disconnects here are, though:

    1. MT3 is not MTPro. 6A admits that. There is a good foundation for a lot of additional features, but they aren’t there yet.
    2. There was no indication that the free version would be seriously crippled in terms of users/blogs. My impression was always that it would be more static in its features — no further development, or a generation or two behind — but not a serious reduction in functionality.

    So it’s not surprising that there’s a lot of hue and cry.

    As to what would be reasonable? My thought was, “Well, heck, to get MT Pro with a bunch of added features, I could see paying $50-100.” Implicit was that it would be available to all my blogs and authors.

    Maybe that was unreasonable as a supposition, and I’m sure (I hope to God) that 6A did some sort of business analysis, but I think that abrupt change in expectations is a big reason why folks are plotzing over this.

  9. More on MT 3.0

    I’ve been reading some things about MT 3.0, getting a feel for what other people think. THe overwhelming majority are not happy with the pricing scheme. As others have noted, the new licensing requirements mean significant price increases or blog…

  10. Beyond the problems this causes for gaming blogs, Dr Kate notes how this impacts folks who have been hosting blogs for others — people who aren’t web geeks, who don’t have their own domain, who aren’t interested in ponying up the bucks. It’s an offer I’ve made before, but obviously couldn’t any more. Those people will have to go to something like Blogger. It’s also observed that the license seems to forbid installations on machines with more than one CPU. Say what?

    (And, heck, what about multiple people on a single Internet host installing MT. Is that allowed? On first blush, I nearly think not. Who wrote this license agreement?)

    75th Trombone opines that the mention in Mena’s comment …

    We haven’t built in any nagware for license violations or phone home mechanisms. We trust our users’ good judgment and intentions. We intend to use our good judgment in being flexible about enforcing these limits.

    … means a wink and a nod and go ahead and use it as you will. Nope. It’s a legal license. I can’t trust something like that, especially since someone else with a far less pleasant attitude (assuming that’s what it is) may buy 6A (has Computer Associates bought anything else lately?).

  11. The beauty of open source

    Over the next few weeks, the topic of Movable Type’s new pricing scheme for version 3.0 will most certainly draw very strong feelings on most blogs on the net. While I can understand SixApart’s their position in charging a good amount of change …

  12. Give WordPress a try. With recent developments a lot of people are moving over and there is plenty of help on the forums and in the chat channel. If you have any troubles I’d be happy to assist you myself.

  13. Hmm, I don’t like this.

    I am one of those people Dr. Kate mentioned, so it’s slighty worrying to think I may have to move to blogger in the future.

    Bad 6a.

    :’-(

  14. Swallowing my chill pill with my morning coffee.

    Wow, wasn’t yesterday a fun day in the blogosphere? OK, stupid question. It probably wasn’t all that enjoyable for most MT fans and was probably a particularly bad day over at Six Apart. Last I checked Mena’s entry talking briefly about the new license…

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